I'm using a lenovo U160 when I'm on the road and found these two things pretty annoying when installing Debian GNU/Linux on it:
- the i915 video chipset renders a black screen;
- the wifi does not work out of the box.
The wifi chipset is a Broadcom BCM4313 [14e4:0510] but is not supported (at least as of now) by the b43 module. This forces us to use the brcmsmac module together with the corresponding firmware (apt-get install firmware-brcm80211). The module acer_wmi has to be blacklisted.
As for the black screen, a simple fix is to add the following line to the file /etc/default/grub (don't forget to update-grub afterwards) or alternatively set the value directly from the boot prompt
As for a long-term fix, simply blacklist the intel_ips module (add the line blacklist intel_ips to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf configuration file). It will simultaneously get rid of the freeze after the system enters hibernation state (power saving mode).